Vintage Horror T Shirts (Ebay's Got 'Em, We Want 'Em)

Good morning!

What's the T, people? I am bleary eyed at the non fiction service desk, I will tell you what. We went over to some friends' house to play Mario Kart and talk trash last night, and while we had a whale of a time, 11:45-bedtime-me is way more irresponsible than 9:45-bedtime-me, vis-à-vis the fact that when I woke up, cartoon like, to strains of one of those classical morning songs and rays of sunlight streaming through one window, it was EIGHT THIRTY. Had I set my alarm? Who can say. Had I woken up a full hour and a half later than I usually do on a work day? Absolutely. Was I supposed to actually be at work at 8:30? Uh, yeah. I parked in the $10 a day lot (instead of my usual shuttle spot) and managed to get in the door by about 9:05, but daddurn it, that is the first time I have been significantly I think ever in my four years here at the biblioteca. Ah, well.

Speaking of pulse-racing drama, however, how about vintage horror/sci-fi t-shirts? I am loving some of these vintage graphic designs almost as much as I love the movies they represent!!

VTG 1991 ALIENS movie t-shirt, horror science fiction cult classic 1980's film

As usual, I was looking for something T-O-T-A-L-L-Y different (to the point that I'm not quite sure what it was) yesterday when I fell into a veritable wormhole of these seventies', eighties', and nineties' movie tie-in t shirts. It's interesting to me that there's an even split here between the kinds of items we're looking at-- half are in the "sold to people who love the movie" category (in the back of Rolling Stone by mail, in your local record store, etc), and another good half I think are promotional items from the movie's release. I love the idea of these new-old t-shirts being in a box somewhere in someone-who-used-to-work-for-the-movie's attic like "Oh, those?". Perfect example: Matthew's dad, who was a musician in LA in the 80's, was going through some stuff in closet storage when I noticed some t-shirts that were being used almost-as-packing for some items in a carboard box-- what where they? A promotional t-shirt from the LA premiere of Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein and another from a Boz Skaggs concert in the mid-seventies'. To someone who worked in that industry, I guess it's like "Oh, yeah! I remember that. Cool, huh? Wow, that was a long time ago", whereas to the rest of us star-struck plebians, it's like "OH MY GOD. IS THIS REAL LIFE." (he let me have both of them, because he is a good father-in-law).

Deadstock 1991 PREDATOR 80s horror movie

What might have started out as "Here, wear this shirt when you're working in the production office of this super low budget movie we're trying to put together with scotch tape and dreams" or "Hey, give these away at the movie opening, maybe we can create some buzz" turns into a rare, tangible object of movie history. Looking at these, I'm reminded of the behind the scenes featurette on the dvd of The Fog. Thing I have probably mentioned 1,000,000 x: I am a HUGE "John Carpenter in his prime" fan. HUUUUGE.  I think the handful of movies he made in the late seventies' and early eighties' have STILL set a cultural high water mark for horror movies in general (and are good enough to generally excuse his 1983-2010 output...Orson Welles didn't make Citizen Kane every time he got behind the lens, either). I could tell you about how much I love The Thing until I was actually blue in the face. My little movie loving brain was sent into overdrive listening to Carpenter and ex-wife/muse Adrienne Barbeau talk about how family-like the cast and crew of these iconic movies were. There was a lot of "Yeah, this guy was my roommate's boyfriend, and the sound guy was dating so-and-so's sister, and then we all went up to Santa Monica for Memorial Day" type stuff that I just cannot see "young Hollywood" doing today...all very "We're all trying to make it in the movies, let's help each other!" and things haphazardly falling into place, rather than the kind of impenetrable front and implacable sang froid it feels like you have to have to be in the business nowadays.

PHANTASM movie promo t shirt TALL MAN cult horror

At ANY RATE-- how about going to work every day in your "SEND MORE COPS" Return of the Living Dead t shirt? I want one that has the Tina quote "YOU'VE GOT TO LET ME EAT YOUR BRAAAINS." That whole movie is golden, really:

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD vintage 1985 t-shirt

I have always loved spooky scary stuff, but it wasn't until I was out of college and teaching high school that I got mondo into 70's and 80's horror movies. I was reading a book called, appropriately enough, Horror Films of the 1970's, by John Kenneth Muir...it is a FABULOUS reference guide/gateway drug to the genre. As I was taking down copious "what to watch" notes in my composition book, a fellow member of the English department who worked across the hall said, "Oh, are you into horror movies? Have you seen any Argento?" Having had a bad experience with Suspiria (which is, of course, a super-accomplished movie in the horror canon, but not one I particularly "liked"), I tossed my chesnut lack-of-curls and said, "Yeah, I didn't really like him as much as I thought I was supposed to." Undeterred, my colleague went, "Ok, but have you seen Deep Red? Opera? Tenebre?" These would all soon be titles I myself would be spouting to others when they asked me about my interest in horror movies, because the guy was SPOT ON, and I was a complete convert. He ended up lending me those, Phantasm and Phantasm II, Zombi, and a whole slew of movies that had otherwise flew under my radar. God bless him.

Vintage Hellraiser Pinhead t-shirt, medium

Without that book, its companion piece Horror Films of the 1980's, and my co-worker/cinephile's gentle nudge over the edge of a VHS horror treasure trove I never knew existed, I might not be overly familiar with the movie Monkey Shines, which is actually a VERY GOOD George A. Romero helmed horror movie about a paraplegic man and his overly-attached helper monkey. 

Vintage original 1980's Monkey Shines horror movie t-shirt, small

Or Maniac (1980), which was remade in 2012 with Elijah Wood as the titular maniac. I haven't seen the new version, but it would be hard to top the skin-crawlingly creepy and gory original.

VTG MANIAC 1980 ORIGINAL MOVIE PROMO T-SHIRT 80S CULT HORROR FILM TOM SAVINI

Well nigh perfect Night of the Living Dead shirt? Yes, please. Could watch this for days (and the 90's remake is just as good!)

Night of the Living Dead Zombie Hands T-Shirt Vintage 1980s S

Little Goldblum love up in this piece:

1986 THE FLY cult horror movie t-shirt vtg unworn 80s David Cronenberg

Can't help loving Norman Bates...while the original is a masterwork, I still think the franchise is solid in a drive-in movie kind of way. I used to watch the mess of out of them back-to-back when USA network would run them in block succession in the summer when I was a kid. "No-o-o-orman....?" Have you seen Psycho II, III, IV?

Original Psycho II Movie Shirt Horror 1983 Norman Bates Vintage Rare T Shirt m

WHY IS THIS IS $214.99? I love how the $14.99 is just more torment-- get your two hundred bucks for that shirt AND two free pizzas, why don't you.

XS  vtg 70s 1978 DAWN OF THE DEAD george a romero ZOMBIE MOVIE t shirt

Gregory Peck/Lee Remick realness:

Vintage The Omen 1976 Donner Rare Horror Movie 666 Logo Promo T-Shirt Deadstock

The aforementioned Zombi was the first Lucio Fulci movie I saw-- while they're all gleefully over the top, this one, with Mia's sister Tisa Farrow in the lead, is still the most coherent and horribly enjoyable if you ask me.

RARE VINTAGE 80's LUCIO FULCI ZOMBIE HORROR CULT MOVIE ZOMBI T SHIRT

ALSO remade, ALSO a solid original to begin with. Two words: speedboat death.

RARE VINTAGE 80's I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE HORROR CULT MOVIE T-SHIRT

Anyway! I gotta head for the hills, but tell me what you think! Which of these shirts would you almost spend that much money on? Have any horror movie favorites? Do you know anyone who used to work in the movie or music industry and just got tons of free promotional shirts a gal like I would drool over (just making conversation here, no ulterior motive...)? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with more vintage madness. Have a great Wednesday! See you then.

Weekend Finds: Lilli Ann (Real!) Fox Fur Cardigan

Good morning!

Well, it's Wednesday! We've got three more days until the weekend, and aren't I pleased as punch it's rolling along the way it is so far. I told you I didn't find a LOT of stuff this weekend, but all the things I did find, I was really pleased with, right? Here's the thing, second to my 70's paintings, that I found myself thrilled to pieces about:

Hel-LO black fox-fur trimmed cardigan. I was at a Michael Taylor sale in East Nashville where I was grandly greeted by one of the ladies who runs the sale (I can't help but love to be recognized at these things, as I'm there every weekend). "Everything's seventy-five percent off, and the clothes, unless they're marked, are five for a dollar!" she crowed happily, and I'm like, "Well...let's get to work!" I didn't find anything I liked in the bedrooms of a cramped ranch style house in the Rosebank neigborhood, but in the hall closet, next to some overstuffed nineties' leather overcoats, was this fancy dress cardigan. Black fox fur...let me think about that for a second....no, just kidding, I didn't even hesitate to start carrying it around the sale and bought it without trying it on after I came up empty handed on the rest of the house. 

While the sleeves, in keeping with the eighties' probable provenance of the piece, are a little puffier and the overall cut less sleek and tailored than I usually like, there is NO ARGUING WITH AN ACTUAL FUR PIECE and in all black, to boot. When I checked the label, wasn't I pleased to see an old, familiar name as the designer?

Lilli Ann was a line of in many cases fabulously whimsical, in all cases very high quality, womenswear founded by Adloph Schuman in the 1930's, who named the company after his wife Lillian. If you're a vintage-loving veteran or habitué of Etsy and Ebay listings to drool your heart out over, you, too, have probably suffered at the three figure price tags and glorious eleganza of Lilli Ann's forties', fifties', and sixties' coats and dresses (see here, here, and here for some examples I'm dying over). Lilli Ann outfits weren't cheap when they came out back-in-the-day, and haven't seemed to devalue a penny since. While this sweater hails from the last days of the Lilli Ann line, probably around the time Schuman passed in 1985, there's no arguing with the drama of the huge, luxe fur collar. As my aesthetic turns ever inward into a kind of thirties'/forties' European vibe, this cardigan falls well within the style parameters of effortlessly elegant. Throw this on over anything and it turns into an evening look. Three cheers for Lilli Ann!

Best part of this story, though? Those tags above and the price tag from the store were still on the cardigan itself! So I not only know how exactly what kind of fur the collar is made from, but also how much someone originally paid for it. Ahem:

Four HUNDRED and fifty dollars? USD or some devalued foreign currency I'm not taking into account? At any rate, the MT sale's $30 tag was much more reasonable, but with the 75% sale running?  I ended up paying SEVEN DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS. Thank you, Jesus...thank you, estate sales...for making my million dollar movie dreams come true one at a time through the magic of bargain-basement-pricing. 

This is actually the third piece of Lilli Ann in my closet, as I keep a sharp eye out at thrift stores and the like for names I'm familiar with. It pays to train the eye! I got a Lilli Ann car coat in off-white mohair for $10 at the flea market a few months ago (it's in winter storage or I would model it for you...looks a lot like lovely Emma's coat she also got at the flea market in this post, except sans buttons-- I'm telling you, the fairgrounds are lousy with bargains!), and found this sharp lapel'd, sharp shouldered jacket when I wasn't even looking for anything at the East Nashville Goodwill.

Matthew needed a simple black blazer for a keyboard gig he was playing about a year ago-- while he has no end of suit jackets and even two or three tuxedo jackets from my non-stop buying of vintage menswear (what am I supposed to do, the man is EXACTLY the right size for Mad Men men's clothes), there was somehow a black-blazer-sized-hole in his wardrobe. Seriously, this was one trip of 500 in which I was honest to goodness not looking for anything for myself-- no housewares, no dresses, just blazers. It was early last summer, so the outwear sections in general were limited, but what to my wondering eyes should appear as I thumbed through the racks but a Lilli Ann sixties' jacket with adorable striped lining? $7.99. Fifty cents more than the fox fur piece of the future, but dang. STILL.

Forgive the clashing soutache-braid dress I was wearing this morning--
 these photos were last minute before I hopped in the car for work!

This just goes to show, though, that if you know what you're looking for and YOU ARE ALWAYS LOOKING, it's entirely possible to beat the shell-game of a lot of things you want but can't afford on Ebay and Etsy. While I look at those sites a lot for inspiration these days, I'd be relatively wary/chary/leery of ordering something for a $100, lest I find it in a pile of clothes at the flea market next weekend for $5. Now, if the vintage force field could just send me a few more of these Lilli Ann's at rock bottom prices, I would be very grateful. Just saying!

Sorry to dash--I was going to gab on about other Lilli Ann's I've seen online, but I have to get back to work! How about you? Did you find anything fabulous out at the sales this weekend? Do you have any Lilli Ann pieces in your wardrobe? What is it about certain vintage items that draws you to them? Let us discuss!

That's all for today, but listen...off in the distance...I could swear I hear the weekend train, chugging its way into the station. :) Have a great Wednesday, and I'll talk to you tomorrow. Til then!

Burton and Taylor (Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West 2013)

Good afternoon!

How's everybody! Night before last, my dvd copy of the recent BBC production Burton and Taylor finally came in at the library, and I was so pleased I went ahead and watched it the same night! If you knew my library video viewing habits, I am always trying to squeeze in like four movies I've had for fourteen days in on the fourteenth day, but THIS! This is too good to pass up. I've been pining over the production since all the hubbub about it when it aired across the Atlantic, was upset I didn't have cable and BBCAmerica when it aired earlier this year, and eagerly put a hold on it when our library bought a copy or two. And lemme tell you, kids...it was worth the wait!

The preamble to this post: Every once and awhile, narrative lightning does strike twice in Filmland. 1988/1989 saw two adaptations of Les Liasions Dangereux (Milos Forman's Valmont and Stephen Frears's better Dangerous Liasions, respectively), 2005/2006 two biopics of Truman Capote (Capote and the less successful Infamous, respectively), and 2012/2013 two Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton movies (the easy-to-confuse Liz and Dick and Burton and Taylor). In all three cases, there seems to be a definite "better" property...I still like to look at Colin Firth in Valmont, but he's no match for Malkovich's unforgettable portrayal of the main character in Dangerous Liasions. Tiny Toby Jones more closely resembles the author of In Cold Blood, but the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman might as well have been Capote in the movie of the same name. Similarly, you can't even compare Liz and Dick to Burton and Taylor. And I don't even say that out of some grudge-held antipathy towards poor La Lohan... she honestly didn't have a chance in the Lifetime production. There are I Can't Believe It's Not Butter commercials with better production value and dramaturgy than Liz and Dick. Speaking as someone who loves biopics with a selfless, acolytic, movie-obsessed heart, I sat through about twenty minutes of the miniseries before switching it off, shuddering with horror at the thought of how ANYONE could take as interesting a series of biographical events and utterly fail to have them come across. So, you can imagine I was holding out hope but w-o-r-r-i-e-d about how bad Burton and Taylor would be.

Spoiler alert! Worries were completely unfounded. The movie, while not perfect, is a great and above all FAIR representation of my most beloved celebrity couple in the twilight of their twenty year love affair.

Burton and Taylor stars Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter as the titular twentieth century pair, following the former couple's semi-disastrous 1983 run performing Noel Coward's Private Lives on Broadway. Why disastrous? Where to start! At the opening of the movie, Burton, married and divorce from the violet eyed movie icon twice at this point, is more interested in lucratively returning to the stage while maintaining his sobriety and relationship with personal assistant-partner Sally Hay. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is more interested in a detente if not an all out reconciliation with the great love of her life, slipping easily into the role of a kittenish, volatile flirtation with Burton. The course of true love never ran smooth, after all-- and with these larger than life characters, each with lingering feelings for the other, each with their own professional and personal egos, each battling late-stage alcohol addiction....well, it's a powder keg.

While I'm disappointed no one's tackled a major miniseries on the too-wild-to-be-true-yet-totally-true life stories of the Burtons, for the present I'll be happy with the excellent Kashner dual biography, Burton's own published diaries, and this great 90 minute soak into the relationship. I think the best choice this production made, was a) its focus on a single aspect of the couple's chronology (a few months of 1983, wisely excising the last months of touring the production did) and b) its casting of actors who can really put across a part. While neither bears more than a passing resemblance to Elizabeth and Richard, both Bonham Carter and West are exceptional in their task of making you believe they're the couple. Looking at these still photos I kept thinking, "Well, she's beautiful, but she's nothing like Elizabeth Taylor", while after the first five minutes of the movie, the thought never crossed my mind that she wasn't the woman herself. She caught the magnetism and the vulnerability of the star, along with a surprisingly approximation of the cute, Minnie-Mouse-with-a-sailor's-streak voice of hers.

Same for West, giving off alternating waves of Burton's guilt, affection, and irritation towards Taylor. The hair did a great deal towards building up his resemblance, but more than that the voice and the palpable tragedy of Burton at this point in his career-- a wistful husk of the man who won a Tony for Camelot and stormed Broadway in Hamlet twenty years earlier. I was ready to deeply dislike whatever characterization he put in for the film, and instead, fell in love. The idea of someone you can't live with but can't live without has been visited countless times in romantic dramas...but this one played out on screen as well as off, and there's a lasting bite to the sadness of Taylor and Burton not being able to work it out that really shines through the picture.

Another Liz, the gossip columnist Liz Smith, just about said everything I would have liked to have said about the movie in this article, PLUS with the benefit of personal knowledge of the couple and having been present for opening night in the Private Lives production in 1983. I love her succinct recap of the real-life situation intertwined with her praising but not fawning attitude towards the BBC movie. Which is about where I stand...it's not something I would want to watch another twenty times, but I was very impressed with both the performances of Bonham Carter and West as well as the quality of the storytelling itself.

The real deal in 1983.

To sum things up, I now want to read Burton's diaries all over again and watch a bunch of their movies, and isn't that the best compliment you can pay a biopic? The last ten minutes (complete with slow-mo last scene and ridiculous pre-credits title card codas) was a little painfully bad, but the preceding eighty minutes was thoroughly enjoyable stuff for people who can't get enough of these real-life romantic figures. Also, I would like to start teetering around on stilettos in a huge (in my case fake) silver fox fur coat and even larger sunglasses á la La Taylor in this movie. Ugh! Glamour, glamour, and glamour. We'll have to talk some day about my lasting fascination with her personal life and career, but for now, know it's safe to watch this movie and not get your little cinephilic heart broken.

How about you? Seen anything good lately? Did you watch either of the Burton Taylor biopics? What were your thoughts? What's your favorite Elizabeth Taylor movie, if you have one? Let's talk!

I have to get back to work, but will see you tomorrow for Photo Friday! Have a great Thursday. Til then!

Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Good morning!

I'm still a little under the weather from my winter adventure on Monday, so I've spent most of this morning listening to a documentary on Bruce Springsteen and mending books in the library work room. And hasn't the former been interesting! I have to say, in spite of being obsessed with the energy in radio hits like "Born to Run", "Glory Days", and "Dancing in the Dark", that for a classic rock connoisseur, I do not know a lot about Bruce Springsteen. 

I bought this album in high school and had the cover taped to the kitchen wall in my college apartment-style dorm,
along with Neil Young and Peter Frampton, among others. LOOK AT HIM.

Things I do know:

• Pappy, whose favorite genre of songs is "the story song", LOVES "Glory Days". Sings along with it every time it comes on the oldies' station. Which is a lot.
• My college sociology professor, Dr. Tally, was really, REALLY into the album Born in the U.S.A. He opened class once with a story about how his Springsteen concert t shirt had been actually stolen from a gym locker room in the eighties', and it was a great loss. He had us write an extra verse to the song "My Hometown". Those are the only two things I remember from that class.
• Dude was SMOKING. HOT. in the late seventies'. Not much less cute now, but truly, 1978 Bruce Springsteen... it's hard to look at the cover of Darkness at the Edge of Town, thirty plus years after its release, without having a teenybopper heart flutter.

I was reading a book called Rock and Roll Stories by photographer Lynn Goldsmith that includes a lot of her famous photos of musicians (everybody from the B-52s to Miles Davis to Michael Jackson). She was dating Springsteen in the late seventies', and took a series of photos which include the aforementioned cover shot for Darkness on the Edge of Town. Some girls have all the luck! There's a wistful little paragraph of a caption about how their relationship fell apart under the strain of being two headstrong, career-driven people, which immediately made me interested in knowing more about that time period and Springsteen himself. I'm telling you, there is no more attractive category of books for me than "celebrity intimate's memoirs", I could read this stuff all night and all day and just start over at the beginning when I hit the end. The stuff that dreams are made of!

A Goldsmith photo of Springsteen. Not bad, huh?

Last night, I put on a copy of Born in the U.S.A. that had snuck into my record collection via an unusually good score of 80's records in good condition out at the Rivergate Goodwill (Madonna's True Blue, some AC/DC, Loverboy, Lionel Ritchie...someone donated their whole eighties' album collection!). It was such a weird feeling to put on a record and listen to it the whole way through, front to back. What a front...what a back:

What was interesting to me, in having the physical product in my hands, was what a complete, pre-Internet package you have here for discovering the artist in the album design. Not every record has much more than track listings and an album cover! Born in the U.S.A. includes a picture sleeve with the E Street Band and other album credits, AND the all important lyric sheet. While I put in plenty of time transcribing songs from mixtapes in looseleaf notebooks in high school, I can remember how exciting it was following along with the lyric sheet of Sergeant Pepper's or Aladdin Sane, thinking, "Thank you, record company, for recognizing the fact that I don't want to know, I NEED to know what the artist I'm into right now is saying on this all-important-album-to-me RIGHT NOW." We didn't have the internet in my Luddite parents' house at all when I was growing up, so the packaging of a cd and the library books I could get on the artists went a long way in my musical education. I took the lyric sheet and read through it as the album played.

Plus, look at how much BRUCE there is to look at in this album:

And isn't it a lonely, frustrated, epic little album at that. In 1984, Bruce Springsteen was thirty five, had been playing music professionally for nearly twenty years, and was almost a decade away from the commercial success of 1975's Born to Run album.  I am always blown away by how musicians had careers back in the sixties', seventies', and eighties'. One album hits big, next album fizzles, you just keep sloughing away at it and touring until you break into the charts again. 1980's The River had the hit "Hungry Heart" in the top 10, 1982's Nebraska  was a critical success, but Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen's seventh album, was a MONSTER. Seven singles in the top 10! Fifteen MILLION copies sold in the US alone! And no wonder. The cri de coeur that is "Dancing in the Dark"... "Cover Me", originally meant as a song for Donna Summers (?!)...the often misappropriated title track..."Glory Days"...I like every song on the album, and that doesn't happen very often! (I guess that's why they call it a classic, Lisa; I guess that's why they call it a classic).

Another strange thing about the Boss? Someone here at NPL in the collections development division must have a thing for him...we have THIRTY NON FICTION BOOKS on his life and career in our catalog. THIRTY. Don't believe me? Look at these search results!  Part of my duties in the reference department up here include creating two book displays (on tables near the stacks) a month-- I once literally did a display that was entirely Bruce Springsteen books (while somehow managing to actually read none of them...shame!), with just a picture of him in the middle with the words "THE BOSS" emblazoned across the top. Now, having a new perspective on that classic album, I'll have to actually crack a few open and tell you what kind of insights I gain into the legend of New Jersey's most famous son.

How about you? Are you a Springsteen fan? Have you rediscovered any classic rock albums lately that you'd just overlooked somehow? Who's one artist you would LIKE to get into but never got around to? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll catch you back here tomorrow. Keep trucking through the work week, and we'll see you then! Take care.

Holiday Specials Week: Day One, Pee Wee's Christmas Special (1988)

Good morning!

Well, folks, it's that time of year-- we're almost in the home stretch for Christmas! I have all my gifts wrapped, I have a fridge full of ingredients ready to be cooked for holiday cheer-making...I can't lie, I am super excited for the midweek festivities. What have I been doing over the weekend to get in the right frame of mind for yuletide activities? Oh, just Christmas specials. Youtube, gracious Youtube, has given us the gift this year of user-uploaded xmas specials from my childhood, and from here until Christmas Eve, why not look over a few of the better of the best of them with me?

Like, OH MY GOOD LORD, PEE WEE'S CHRISTMAS SPECIAL:

I'm just going to go over some of the highlights of this experience for you. The program is forty-eight minutes of solid, kitsch holiday joy. Read and watch along, if you want, via this link on Youtube! 

I have not seen this special since it originally aired, when I was three. THREE! Hard to believe. In a household where my parents, usually completely nonrestrictive of my constant tv viewing habits, refused to let me watch Labyrinth because David Bowie was "too weird" (um, y'all set yourselves up for my lifelong obsession with him, right there), Pee Wee's Big Adventure was rented from Kroger's enough times to warrant extralegally duping it onto a blank VHS tape. "There's no basement at the ALAMOOOO," my dad would boom along with the tour guide in that one crucial scene, literally slapping his knee at the dada-meets-screwball comedy of Mr. Herman's greatest work. Oh, we watched the FOOL out of that tape. Large Marge and all, it was a family classic at our house. Something about the grey-suited, red bow tied child man Paul Reubens presented onscreen was so adorably mad cap that my parents had no problem with leaving their pre-schooler in his capable hands for half hour romps via his weekly tv show. But this! This Christmas special is something ELSE, to be seeing through the lense of 2013! 

The special opens with a panoramic view of the snowy countryside in which Pee Wee's amazing, crazy holiday'd out, Wayne White created playhouse stands, winking its Christmas lights and sphinx-eyes at us. Inside the playhouse, a full chorus of uniformed Marine Corps officers welcomes you, in song, to Pee Wee's xmas special. The traditional choral arrangement breaks down into an Ike Turner Review like frug-dancing theme, and isn't it the better for it! I'd like to ask Santa what I needed to do this year to get a gold sequin shimmy dress and hair like these backup singers, because I sure would like to know.

The special guest star roster from year of the Lord 1988? Charro, Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, Grace Jones, k.d. lang, Dinah Shore, Little Richard, Cher, the Del Rubio Sisters, Magic Johnson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Joan Rivers. Oh my! Wouldn't you like that to be your dinner guest list at your holiday repast? I think yes.

At the beginning of the show, Pee Wee drafts a mile long xmas list for Santa with the help of Conky the robot...it occurs to me, for the first time, that Conky's eyes are made out of a pair of Brownie box cameras from the fiifties, the flash attachment serving as his peepers! All around the playhouse, I'm seeing pieces of the midcentury that wouldn't even have registered on my radar as a baby, but are making my pulse race as an almost thirty year old.

Example, check out that chair next to Chairy! Won't you, and your five brothers and sisters, please come live at my house? A thought that occurred to me while watching and thinking about all the fifties' and sixties' kitsch on display-- 1963 was only twenty five years ago in 1988. Let that concept sink in for a second....1963....was only twenty five years ago....in 1988. So as "wow, look, it's the eighties'" as this looks to us now, being as it's 2013 and 1988 was twenty five years ago...people in 1988 would feel that way about 1963. *MIND* *BLOWN*.

Pee Wee mingles with regulars from his weekly show as well as the A list celebrities of the special, the first of which is Miss Yvonne. I can just barely recall a lot of the regulars, but "the most beautiful woman in the puppet land" is definitely one of them. She reminds me of a more glamorous version of Lady Elaine from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, all fifties' chiffon prom dress and hair teased to the heavens in a perfect helmet of a hive. She shows up, back in my life after all these years, and suddenly I know exactly what I'm wearing to my parents' house on Wednesday morning. SERIOUSLY, LOOK AT THIS ENSEMBLE. You've got your Christmas tree inspired beehive, your fifties' crinolined dress decked out in red and green chiffon...I might lose the feathery white trim and the weird snowflake harness, but other than that, we are ready to go! Thanks for being a stylespiration, Miss Yvonne!

Moments later, however, I was so disturbed by Floory's bold pass at my beauty icon (which was EVEN MORE BIZARRELY met with "Coming, Floory, dear!" instead of a "where do you get off, bub!"), that I have made it into a text based card for your viewing pleasure. Are you for real, Floory? Come stand over you? You are creeping me out, dude. Check yourself.

Jambi I had completely forgotten about except for his catchphrase of "Mekka Lekka Hi, Mekka Hi Ni Ho". With Margaret Hamilton level green face paint and sequined eyebrows, he's hands down the most fierce of in-playhouse talent. While this seemed like an innocuous genie back in my childhood, I'm pretty sure present day me reads this character as an Ali Baba inspired drag queen. Who grants wishes. Why do I not have something like this in my life.

Jambi, you bettah WORK.

To continue with the running list of off-the-wall celebrity guests, Grace Jones appears, grace á a postal mix-up, and sings "The Little Drummer Boy" in an honest to God breastplate (what is real?! What is fantasy?!). She was supposed to be performing at the White House, but instead was accidentally delivered to the Playhouse. I bet Pee Wee got Reagan's mail all the time with postal delivery snafus like this. Does Jones look 100% amazing? She does. It's also funny to see Pee Wee standing next to her-- while the camera is kind in this shot, in wide angle frames, Grace Jones looks about 4x the size of Pee Wee, like something distorted the proportions in post-production. LEMME HAVE THAT FUTURISTIC NUN HAT, GJ. GIVE ME THE HAT AND NO ONE GETS HURT.

Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon are next, force-labored into making 500 xmas cards for Pee Wee using a screen print and potato print technique, respectively. "Can we go out and play in the snow, Pee Wee?" "Are my cards finished? Then no!" It's weird how sincere all the guest stars are-- though I guess if you were Annette and Frankie, nothing would much make you bat an eyelash after the crazy convoluted plot lines of those beach blanket movies.

STOP. THE PRESSES. M'f'n' Cher showin' up in this PIECE, heLLO, my real mom. I forgot she was on the guest roster until she showed up and I started shrieking.

Cher's wearing a kind of mini-dress with bustle and thigh-high slits, and asks about the secret word of the day, which is ((whispers)) "year"...ah! Cher! You look like one million dollars cash! Pee Wee writes a verse poem as Cher takes off for, I don't know, a Vegas date with some underage hunk (God love her) "That was Cher! Cher was right there! In the same room as my chair! I hope I didn't stare! Oh well, I don't care!" I do care, Pee Wee. I do care. I love this woman.

Another segment has a kindly, older gentleman in sable and crown, introducing a cartoon. He's regency in Pee Wee's world, as a Captain Kangaroo like character called "The King of Cartoons". Sooooo, if you were wondering why the King of Cartoons look and sounds so familiar, it could be because HE'S BLACULA OMG WHAT DO YOU MEAN BLACULA IS THE KING OF CARTOONS. William Marshall, ladies and gentlemen, in the two roles in which he found his greatest success, King of Cartoons and the world's first famous undead black vampire (in the throes of an obsession with Pam Grier movies, I have seen Scream, Blacula, Scream! more times than I can comfortably admit):

But the surprises don't stop there. Speaking of people you didn't know were in Pee Wee's Playhouse, how about Cowboy Curtis is Laurence Fishburne? Yeah, Morpheus. Yeah, he was in Apocalypse Now, too. Boyz in tha Hood? Uh-huh, same dude, Cuba Gooding's dad. WHAT IS HE DOING IN AN ALL PASTEL COWBOY OUTFIT, COMPLETE WITH PURPLE CHAPS? S. Epatha Merkleson, from Law and Order, plays Reba the mail lady. How did they get such future-famous people on this show?! Folks, I have questions; I just don't have answers. I think it's so neat to see them at the beginning of their careers, willing to do whatever over-the-top role to get into the business.

After...or maybe a bit before...an ice skating moment with Little Richard (the stuff that dreams are made of), the Del Rubio sisters, who, honestly, I had never heard of before, come and sing "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" in racy holiday mini skirts. Triplets in real life, the three girl singers had been active since the forties' in show business (you can read more about them here, careful though, there's flash video and sound right off the bat). Kitsch queen Allee Willis rediscovered them, performing as you see, in the mid eighties' and helped revive their careers. And shouldn't we be glad! These girls are CRAZY!

Later...ok, check this out-- imagine it's 1988. Pee Wee Herman....is more famous...than Oprah Winfrey. FOLKS, PEE WEE HERMAN IS MORE FAMOUS THAN OPRAH WINFREY! I understand she had her show in 1988, but it wasn't anywhere near the cultural touchstone it would become a few years later. Here's the big O herself, all teased coiffure and magenta lipstick, talking in the phone booth with Pee Wee with Dinah Shore on the other line (see inset). I love it!

There's a claymation segment by the future creator of Hey Arnold!, a k.d. lang version of "Jingle Bell Rock", the cuchi cuchi girl herself, Charro, performing "Feliz Navidad" as earnestly as anyone ever has, and some other sketches towards the end...all and all, I would say this show is packed with almost a whole hour of meta nostalgia. But don't take my word for it! Grab a candy cane and some hot cocoa, and watch the whole thing yourself on Youtube. You deserve a break from stocking stuffing, right?

So! Do you remember watching this back in the eighties'? Are you a Pee-Wee fan? Re-watched any childhood favorites lately with the critical, discerning eye of a grown person and been surprised at what you didn't remember? Let's swap stories!

That's all for today, but more xmas special merriment tomorrow and Wednesday. Take care! Get those presents wrapped! Talk soon.